Basic Details
	Country of Origin	:	United Kingdom
	License	:	Malta
	Year of Foundation	:	2005
	Software	:	iPoker Network
	Language	:	English
	Bonus	:	100% Upto £100

Virgin Poker Review

Overview:

Launched in 2005, Virgin Poker received its license in Malta and has ever since been providing poker fanatics with online poker games that are not only fun but rewarding as well. The objective of Virgin Poker was to establish an online poker-playing site that was equally interesting for both skilled players as much as it was enthralling for new comers and pleasure seekers. It certainly achieved its goal and is now considered as one of the leading online poker playing sites in the whole of Europe.

The fabulous rewards and Virgin points are fully packed with exciting goods as is true with all the Virgin promotions. Many players are specially drawn to these wonderful offers besides which there is some great action at the cash tables and tournaments and a lot of money to be won.

About the Virgin Poker Software:

Virgin Poker like all the other poker websites on the iPoker Network uses the Boss Media Software. The software is easy to maneuver and quick to download while the graphics are clear and vibrant and the exclusive Virgin red color evidently decorates the website and the lobby. The lobby is straightforward and gives you easy access to the games through the quick filter that allows you to select the game of your choice as well as the limits you wish to play. Everything on the menus is clear-cut making it simple even for a novice to understand how to get around the site.

The screen is adjustable as per your comfort but alas there is no multi-tabling facility that generally allows you to play at more than one table at a time. Your play statistics, flop percentages, notes, pot size and other basic necessities are also available directly from the lobby.

Games offered at Virgin Poker:

Like all the other poker sites, Virgin Poker too offers the usual poker games that are much enjoyed by players around the world. The games offered are Texas Holdem, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 5-Card Draw, 5-Card Stud, 7-Card Stud and other games. Texas Holdem as usual is the most frequented followed by Omaha but the 5-Card Draw, the 7-Card Stud and 5-Card Stud are also played more often than they are played at other poker sites. Various limit sizes are available making it possible for all kinds of players to find games that suit their budget.

Tournaments:

There are several tournaments available at Virgin Poker with over 30 events taking place each day. Tournaments include the $50 daily free rolls, various qualifiers, free rolls for virgin point holders and re-buy in tournaments with low wagers. The tournaments pick up a rapid pace and plenty of all-in bets are available.

Those who are able to win three final tables in a row are entitled to one of the ten seats to a guaranteed tournament with a final table prize of $15,000. All the players participating at the final table get a share of the money while the winner gets a cash prize of $3,500.

The yearly tournaments include the chief satellite tournaments such as the Virgin Poker League that comprises of various festivals.

Bonus and Promotions

They offer its players a 100% sign up bonus of up to £100 and they have 180 days in which to wager for this bonus.

Promotions include the famous V-Points that can be collected with every cash game and tournament that you play. These Virgin Points can be exchanged for some great gifts such as mobile top ups, flying miles and other lucrative prizes.

Also available is a referral program where you are entitled to $25 for each new player that you successfully introduce to Virgin Poker.

Support:

The ever-helpful Virgin Poker staff are available 24 hours a day to help you out with your queries. You can choose to contact them via email, telephone or the live chat facility that allows you to reach the staff much faster.

The fact of the matter is that most of the time when you are playing Omaha, you are going to be playing a drawing hand. It is a rare occasion that you can flop the nuts and have it hold up through the river. That being the case, you just need to make sure that you are drawing to the nuts and not setting yourself up for a monster hit to your stack.

As you probably already know, when you are playing Omaha Poker, just about all the cards are going to be dealt out on a full table. This makes it very dangerous to draw to anything but the nut flush and the high end of the straight. Doing anything else is a foolish play and will land you in the poor house.

This all goes back to starting hands to make sure that you do not get trapped in a hand that you have no shot of winning. If a flush hits the board and you are sitting on a J high draw, forget about going after the flush. With the amount of cards out, it is unlikely that your suited Jack is the best flush draw at the table.

While flushed are generally pretty easy to get out of the way of, straights are an entirely different matter. This is where people make the biggest mistakes in reading the board and making sure that they have the best hand. It is also where hold’em players go to die.

A bottom end straight that you can play strong in hold’em is of little use in Omaha. If you have problems letting it go, get over it quickly. The only straights that you can play are the high end and a 2 gapper that you have plugged. If you are sitting on two cards that make the straight and one of them is also on the board, let it go unless it is an A high straight.

The reason this hand is so tricky is strictly a mental block. After years of playing hold’em, players are convinced that their straight has to be good with no boat or flush on board. It will only take you a few pots to realize how wrong this mindset is. Remember, if you are not drawing to the nuts, the hand is not worth being in, period. The amount of money that you will lose chasing down these hands will far outweigh the small percentage of times that it actually holds up. Let it go and wait for the next deal.

Yes, the games are similar, but the biggest mistake most beginning players make when they are starting out is in thinking that they can start with the same starting hands and bet the way they would in hold’em. If you do, you are doing nothing more than making a donation to everyone else at the table.

The first difference in the two games is that you are going to get dealt 4 cards in the hole instead of 2. This is very important to know as if you are playing on a full table, just about every card in the deck is going to be dealt out. This means that you are going to have to play cards very carefully going into the river as many a great hand has gone on to die a slow death when that card has been turned over.

Playing Omaha before the flop is much different than no limit. While you will see the occasional raise, it is few and far between to see the game get capped or consecutive raises happen before the flop is dealt out. In most cases, the only hands that even consider raising are AAxx and KKxx, but doing so causes a major problem. Basically, everyone at the table knows what you have at that point and can play accordingly.

The reason you will see a lot of callers before the flop and not much raising is that the possibility of hands is endless. Yes, you still need to be selective in what you play, but with four cards in your hand, you just never know what kind of shape you are in until the flop hits.

Ideally, you want to start the hand off with a decent pocket pair with straight and high flush possibilities. AsAh10s5h would be a hand that would have you salivating before the flop. You are sitting with the best pocket pair that you can start with, two nut flush draws and both a high and low flush possibility.

Once the flop hits, the game changes dramatically. Great hands are turned into complete garbage and questionable hands become fortune makers. Once the flop is dealt, take your time and look it over to see every possibility. Even if you are in the lead, you have to look and see what is out there that could beat you. If there is a draw, someone is holding it in their hand.

If you are playing a straight, you need to make sure that you have the nuts. Since you have to play two cards, it is critical that you have the best two cards on the straight. When you hit a 2 gapper in the middle with no other possibilities, you are locked in. However, if you are sitting on 46 to a flop of 257 and then an 8 hits, you could be in a heap of trouble. You immediately go from the nuts to the low end of the straight. If you fire a bet and someone comes over top of you, you can be pretty sure that they are sitting on the 69. If a 9 hits the river, everyone is now looking down the barrel of a J10 that will steal it on the river.

More than any other game, it is extremely important to watch and see what kinds of hands people start out with. Omaha invites chasers and there are those that will play solid and there are those that will literally play any four cards. You better know the difference when you get into a pot with them.

Omaha Poker is an action game and even the best of hands can turn into complete rags once that flop hits the board. This is one of the primary reasons that you will only see marginal raises before the flop and you will also see a lot of callers. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to get people out of the hand unless you are in position and playing PL Omaha.

Under the Gun
This is the most brutal position to be in with a big hand, especially when you are playing Pot limit Omaha Poker. You look down and see AdAsKdQs and you want to slam the pot, but you are only going to be getting a marginal bet in and you are not going to scare anyone. In actuality, you are only going to serve the complete opposite and make them very much aware of what you are holding. You are going to have to show some restraint here and limp in hoping for someone else to at least double the blinds and give you a real chance to hammer the pot.

If everyone else just falls in line, you are going to have to see how the flop plays out. Remember, you are not playing hold’em here and AA is not as big a hand as it is in that game. The ideal situation would have a couple of callers and then someone making a small raise with all of those players in. This is when you come right over the top and make a pot limit raise. You will chase all of the other limpers and if the raiser does call you, you have a very good chance of having 2 of his outs sitting in your hand. You definitely want isolation here if it all possible and that pot limit raise should get it for you.

Middle Position
When you get a big hand here, you are going to have to play it much the same way as you did in early position unless you get a couple of limpers in front of you. One is really not enough to get enough money into the pot to scare a marginal hand, but if there are two in there, you can absolutely let the raise fly. Again, you are basically showing your hand, but you have to scare some players out and deal with the callers on the flop.

Late Position
In an un-raised pot and several limpers, you are in a strong position to take this hand down pre-flop with a nice raise here. If there are no callers, you should still fire at the pot to make the blinds at least think about it before they get to limp in for free. Your hand is also not so obvious as you could just be looking to steal and may even see someone play back at you. That is a dream circumstance because now you can really lay into the pot.

You do have one other option when there are a lot of players in the pot, but it is a dangerous one. With that many players in the hand, you can limp in and see how the flop hits. You risk losing all of those blinds, but you also could hit along with someone else and have a totally concealed hand. This is something you may do when you are ahead of the game and can afford to throw away a possible pre-flop scoop. This will also give a little variance to your game and have them guessing the next time around.

Remember, you can never play the hands identically time and time again. If you don’t change up your style, you are telegraphing your hand to everyone as the table. When you are running good, you can make a move in middle or late position with lesser cards to represent a hand that you don’t have. You may even choose to show one of those when everyone folds to you to set them on tilt. Once you get them guessing, you hold an extreme edge and can set trap after trap.

If you mention that you play poker to the average person on the street, they will almost always assume you mean Texas Hold’em. Tournament Texas Hold’em was accepted as “the poker game” when the poker boom hit the United States in 2003, after Chris Moneymakers historic World Series of Poker Main Event victory. Millions of college students, middle aged men and women, and retirees began playing the game which was made famous through ESPN’s coverage.

Many people inside the game of poker only play Texas Hold’em and many of these people do not even understand the other forms of poker that are our there. I recently hosted my weekly home poker game and decided to make it a dealer’s choice game. I selected Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, and 7 card stud as my dealer’s choice games and had to explain the rules and concepts of the games numerous times. A few of my friends, who are quite talented Texas Hold’em players, were not big fans of these new games, as they did not fully understand the strategies to excel at the new games and could not be bothered to apply themselves. A few of the other players at the game, loved the new additions. They liked the added action created in Omaha, as well as the new information and betting rounds created in Stud and Razz.

There are so many different and unique caveats of each game, that it creates new and different challenges amongst each game. I, like many, first learned how to play Texas hold’em competitively. I got into Omaha by playing online and reading books such as Super System. At the time I first got into Omaha, I was a bit burnt out on Texas hold’em. That’s what really got me interested in playing Omaha competitively. Learning the nuisances of this game type and the different strategies involved with Omaha brought back my passion for playing poker. I became a student of the game again, studying and learning everything I could about the game. In the end, I became much better at Omaha, but these strategies and new thought processes also helped me in my Texas hold’em game as well.

Some sites do not offer every form of poker or have as high as volume of games in these different games that they do in Texas hold’em. However, most of the large sites and many medium sized sites have many game types. Full Tilt, Poker Stars, and Ultimate Bet all offer games in Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha H/L, Razz, 7 Card Stud and 7 Card Stud H/L. Just like Texas Hold’em, these sites offer micro stakes, .01/.02, low stakes, $1/2, medium stakes, $10/$20, and large stakes, $50/$100 and above. I would suggest starting at very low stakes for Omaha if you are just learning the game. It is a very fast paced game and you don’t want to blow your whole bankroll before you even understand the game.

Throughout the next few weeks, I will take you on a journey through the various forms of Omaha and the challenges with each form and game stype. I will not only give you a better understanding of Omaha Hi and Hi/Lo, but I will teach you some proven winning strategies for each form of Omaha and the various opportunities involved with each game.